April 27, 1930

Hart Crane's Cubistic Poetry in 'The Bridge'

By PERCY HUTCHINSON

THE BRIDGE
By Hart Crane

here is certain to be no unanimity of opinion on "The Bridge," a long poem which we imagine the writer would like to have called a symphonic poem. Mr. Crane,
it will be recalled, is the author of the collection "White Buildings," poems which called forth praise from Eugene O'Neill. "The Bridge" is certain to evoke praise and in a measure deservedly. This, from the publisher's
note on the jacket -- the publisher's "grace" note we were tempted to call it -- states one point of view. "Dedicated to Brooklyn Bridge," the paragraph runs, "this poem is a synthesis of values, past and
present, which may be termed particularly American."

It will be concluded from this that "The Bridge" is out of the ordinary, both in substance and manner. And this is true. But the point of issue will be whether the poet, in seeking individuality for his poem, has not sacrificed contacts with
both common sense and beauty. For an example, there is but a tour de force in the line.
Siphoned the black pool from the heart's hot root.

And although the following seems immensely effective, its effectiveness will be found on analysis, to lie in its lack of intelligibility rather than in its intelligibility. That is to say, it possesses a purely specious effectiveness, for it has neither
true intellectual nor true poetic value.

The swift red flesh, a Winter king --
Who squired the glacier woman down the sky!
She ran the neighing canyons all the Spring;
She sprouted arms; she rose with maize -- to die.

Perhaps this stanza is clear to the author. The present commentator is willing to admit that it is not clear to him. But perhaps clearness, in the usual acceptance of the term, is not desired by Hart Crane. It is possible that there is a new theory of
poetry behind "The Bridge," a question which may be taken up after further quotation. The excerpt, as was the stanza above, is from a section bearing the caption "Powhatan's Daughter," and this part has the further
caption "Dance."

And in the Autumn drought, whose burnished hands
With mineral wariness found out the stone
Where prayers, forgotten, streamed the mesa sands!
He holds the twilight's dim, perpetual throne.
Mythical brows we saw retiring -- loth,
Disturbed and destined into denser green.
Greeting they sped us, on the arrow's oath:
Now lies incorrigibly what years between.
There was a bed of leaves, and broken play;
There was veil upon you, Pocahontas, bride --
O Princess whose brown lap was virgin May;
And bridal flanks and eyes hid tawny pride.

A word should be said as to the divisions of the poem. Following a dedication to Brooklyn Bridge there is "Ave Maria," a poem in which Columbus is represented as soliloquizing on the deck of his flagship; then the "Powhatan's Daughter"
in five parts; "Cutty Sark" and "Cape Hatteras," which impinges on the sea; three so-called "Songs," one of which pictures a burlesque show in New York; "Quaker Hill," in which Isadora Duncan and
Emily Dickinson are brought together; "The Tunnel," which is the New York subway, and an epilogue, "Atlantis."

We suggested the possibility of a theory of poetry which "The Bridge" may have been written to exemplify. Such a theory might be called cubism in poetry. And it would call for just such work as Hart Crane has given us -- the piling up on startling
and widely disparate word-structures so that for the mind the cumulative result of skyscrapers for the eye when looked on through a mist. If this conclusion is in any degree correct, then "The Bridge" is to be regarded as a successful
piece of work. The totality of tonal variations and tonal massings, plus the occasional pictorial achievements, give to the entire piece indisputable weight. Since to the mind of the present writer cubism, whatever value it may have for
painting, is wholly valueless in poetry, "The Bridge," nevertheless, remains for him, in spite of its glitter and its seeming intellectual importance, a piece that is in the main spurious as poetry.